Chesapeake Bay flooding

[ronaultmtd]

Our friend on St. George’s Island, Jack Russell, sent a video of the flooding on the island...I did a search to see what climate change might do in the next few years and found this...

https://e360.yale.edu/features/on-th...and-high-tides

Needless to say, it alarmed me and saddened me...

[Yakmac]

Wow, very sobering. Thanks for sharing Ron.


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[Yak Fish]

That was a really well done video. I enjoyed it a lot. I also learned quite a bit too. Thanks for sharing.

[Big Mike]

Thanks Ron, to think that Dorchester County can go from 4th biggest in Maryland to 14th in the next 80 years because of flooded land is very sobering. I think St George’s Island will be gone as well. Only takes a full moon and SW winds right now to flood the road and yards of houses.

[ronaultmtd]

If we consider that what is happening in our back yard is also happening all over the world and entire island nations are slipping under water, cultures and heritages gone forever...not to get political, but I ask the question...where will all these people go to live?

[Mark]

The cinematography of the video is stunning. It highlights the beauty of our region, albeit while telling a troubling story. However, erosion is nothing new, although the speed of its progression is alarming. And as Ron said, it's not unique to the Chesapeake. But it's especially poignant to us because it's close to us and so visible.

Over forty years ago, James Michener wrote the novel Chesapeake. In it, he tracks the history of the fictional Devon Island in the Bay and the families who lived on it. By the end of his expansive story the island disappears under the waves.

Michener lived in Cambridge as he researched local history for his book. Some say that his Devon Island storyline was inspired by the eroding James Island in the Little Choptank River which he observed even in the 1970s. Here’s a few 2017 photos of James Island that I took:

P1010728.jpg P1010729.jpg

You can see the pine trees, the last trees to withstand the onslaught of brackish water according to the video, have toppled.

Closer to my home, there is Hog Island, the remnants of which you can see if you look to the right when you cross the Kent Narrows Bridge as you head east on Route 50. It’s a favorite fishing spot of mine reachable from the Goodhands Creek Landing. I’ve watched Hog Island quickly disappear in the past 5 years.

Here are few photos of the island from 2014:

P1010788.jpg P1010789.jpg P1010790.jpg

The island is even smaller now. Notice that the remaining soil is covered only with phragmites, which the video points out is the last stage of an island’s existence.

Much closer to home for me is a story from elderly woman I knew in the early 1990s who lived in Pasadena’s Bayside Beach. She told me that as young girl, and this would have been 100 years ago now, there was an island in the Patapsco River at the mouth of Bodkin Creek that her family used to farm. I’ve never found a historical record of the island but I have no doubt her memory was correct. The Patapsco has a large shallow area offshore near where she described the location of island.